by Lou Jones

Created on: November 13, 2007   Last Updated: September 09, 2008

Soldiers should be able to opt out of wars they disagree with.

From a practical viewpoint, military needs soldiers who are ready and willing to carry out orders in dangerous and deadly circumstances. Soldiers who are forced to participate in a war they disagree with are more likely to refuse orders, fail to carry out orders properly, sow dissent, and weaken cohesiveness. A soldier who both disagrees with a war and believes that forcing him or her to participate in that war may become a security risk, a prime target for an enemy always ready to recruit spies and saboteurs.

From both a moral and legal standpoint, the youth of enlistees is an argument for permitting a soldier to opt out. In the United States, seventeen is the minimum age of enlistment. Men and women who are not trusted with alcohol, even men and women who cannot vote and in some states are not legally adults, are permitted to sign a contract that binds them to kill other human beings and risk being killed by other human beings, wherever the US government wishes, whenever the US government wishes, and for whatever reason the US government wishes, with few legal and practical options for refusing on moral grounds once a soldier is in a combat zone.

Ordinarily, young men and women should be encouraged to keep their contracts. However, the moral implications of killing under orders and the reality of personal mortality are usually not grasped at age 21 as they are at age 41, or even age 25. If, under the law, an eighteen-year-old doesn't have the life experience necessary to consume alcoholic beverages, how can an eighteen-year-old be bound to a contract with such complex and life-altering implications?

Because our government changes hands, and because weak checks and balances are even weaker in time of war and outside the borders of the United States, soldiers who enlist during one regime, confident that they will not be deployed to fight in a war they disagree with, may find themselves in different circumstances when the government changes hands.

In addition, no real means exist to prevent governments from using misinformation, secrecy for the purposes of controlling public opinion, and outright lies to conceal the actual motivation for going to war, the nature of the enemy, or the circumstances soldiers will face in the combat zone. If a soldier who finds him or herself shooting at unarmed rioting civilians when he or she expected to combat only armed, foreign terrorists wants out, the government and

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